Mr. Frank T. Bullen gives a remarkable instance of the tenacious hold of the turtle upon life. “On one occasion,” he records, “our men cut all the flesh and entrails of a turtle away, leaving only the head and tail attached to the shell. Some time had elapsed since the meat had been scooped out of the carapace, and no one imagined that any life remained in the extremities. But a young Dane, noticing that the down-hanging head had its mouth wide open, very foolishly inserted two fingers between those horny mandibles. It closed, and our shipmate was two fingers short, the edges of the turtle’s jaws had taken them clean off, with only the muscular power remaining in the head. Then another man tried to cut the horny tail off, but as soon as his keen blade touched it on the underside it curled up and gripped his knife so firmly that it was nearly an hour before the blade could be withdrawn.” Signor Redi, the great zoologist, records how he once cut a turtle’s head off and noted that it lived for twenty-three days without a head, and another whose brains he removed lived for six months. The green turtle, the species favoured in this country, is not a carnivorous creature, like the snapping-turtle, its food being a particular kind of sea grass found on the coral reefs in the West Indies. Some time ago Mr. Bellis brought a large quantity of this grass to London, with the idea of feeding the creatures in captivity, but they refused to take it. In his cellars in the City one can see any day a number of these turtles. Here they are kept until a telegram arrives from a distant hotel, when away goes the turtle to be turned into soup for the forthcoming banquet. Those hotels which do not care about the trouble of killing the creature can procure the soup in tins and bottles direct from the importer, and it is not surprising to learn that large quantities are sold. It requires eight pounds of the best turtle-flesh to make one quart of soup. The green turtle grows to an immense size, but it has been found that specimens weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds are not desirable, the flesh becoming coarse as the animal increases in weight. The shell of this variety is practically valueless, but the hawksbill turtle yields what is popularly known as “tortoiseshell,” and the armour covering of a good specimen may be worth eight pounds. Its flesh, however, is too coarse for consumption, though here it should be added that it is doubtful whether those who occasionally partake of green-turtle soup would relish that made from the flesh of the snapping-turtle.